


Magnificent Magical Mechanical Maid: Crow!!

by RoflsMazoy



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Manga & Anime, Original Fiction, other world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:20:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28315902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoflsMazoy/pseuds/RoflsMazoy
Summary: A young woman dies, and is reincarnated in her ideal body.The body of a robot-like maid, that can use magic. Yes, it isn't a full robot-maid like she asked for, but it's close enough isn't it?!She is tasked with the restoration of an old Mage's manor, who was also her body's creator. To do so, she'll have to do battle with Demons, heiresses, and an assortment of other colorful characters, in a world alien to her own in many ways.A fun, light-hearted, anime-esque adventure with little stakes.





	Magnificent Magical Mechanical Maid: Crow!!

**Author's Note:**

> This is a piece of fiction created for a friend of mine, so do know that some of it might not make any sense to you. It's written in a sort of self-indulgent style, but I can only do so much while not being the actual person herself. I'll do my best to explain anything that needs explaining in the footnotes for each chapter. Please comment anything specific you would like to be explained (except for story decisions and character decisions that the main character ends up making. Since I didn't base it on my own logic, I based it on hers.)
> 
> Also this was written over a period of 6 months believe it or not. I do intend on continuing it but don't expect it anytime soon.
> 
> (Also, Crow, if you're reading this, Merry Christmas.)

**Magnificent Magic Mechanical Maid: Crow!**

One life closes. A flame is snuffed out before its time. Accident? Intention? She’ll never know, but the scene before her can’t be mistaken. Black void, lifeless space. Was this it? Was this the afterlife?

No, not yet. Colour began to filter down towards her vision. As they came closer, they began to take the shape of her memories. The so called ‘life flashing before your eyes’ phenomenon she’d heard about, in all of those ‘Movies’ people were always talking about. She was joking of course. But only a little bit.

It seemed she had the privilege of watching her most loved memories once again, but it was pointless. She already knew which ones would make her the most content. She saw her life, her family, her friends, but as her memories came to the point that she knew they would, she remembered that this… this was all she needed to know.

A girl with short, orange hair, and an exceedingly bright personality came to colour her memories. She was talented, hard-working, and persevering. Eternally cheerful, bright, and warm like a ray of sunshine!! And at the same time, courageous enough to stand up to all adversity.

She was more than just a person. She was her goddess. Rin.

She watched as the rest of her oncoming memories slowly turned orange, just like the light of her idol. Her messiah. The only source of goodness in the world.

Again, she was only half joking.

There were plenty of other important memories too, such as maids. Maids were good. Very good. And also robots. And also robot maids! But alas, she could only lament that she would never see them. See them done right, that is. The absolute state of robot maids was deplorable, in fiction and reality. She had some very strong thoughts about that, but there was no one for her to tell them to, which made her even more mad.

But there was no real sense in that, was there? Especially now that she was already between this world and the next.

She let out a sigh, or as close to one as she could manage as a soul. It was hardest to face one’s mortality when looking directly at it, it seemed.

 _“Wow, that was a great quote,”_ She would’ve said if she was able to speak, but she was painfully aware even as she laughed to herself (mentally), all of these thoughts were just to distract herself from being dead.

But it’s not as if she couldn’t do that. Who was going to tell her otherwise? God? She could do whatever she wanted with her own consciousness. Because she was the only one here. The only _thing_ here. She couldn’t really ‘see’ with her eyes, but she could feel the void beyond. Like a blade, waiting for the veil of memories to pass, to sever her consciousness and leave her dead, once and for all.

Each second of ‘time’ she felt pass by was more the last of her time ‘alive’. The colours would soon fade, leaving nothing but darkness. The End.

How could that be? She had barely lived any life. All the things she hadn’t finished, and the things she hadn’t even begun. Her whole life had been ahead of her, and now it was gone.

The colours swayed in their… appropriate arrangement? (Sue her, she didn’t have a dictionary on hand. Take it up with whoever wrote this and didn’t bother putting more effort in to find an appropriate word for a character who wouldn’t be able to find one in the first place).

She tried to slow down the… playback time, she supposed she should call it. To squeeze a bit more time out of her final moments.

That’s all she wanted really, more time.

If she knew it was going to run out, she would’ve enjoyed it more. Well alright, she had always known it was going to run out, but this early?!

She wanted to live again. She wanted to _do_ something, to just reach higher than she was. She wanted another chance at life. But that wasn’t about to happen, was it?

…

…. …

… …. ….

……. …. …….

…… ……… ……Well, if she _did_ have another chance, she did have a wish. A small, teensy wish.

Well, it wasn’t small. It wasn’t small at all to wish for another chance at life to begin with, so why not wish for something large anyway?

In the case that she was given another chance at life, she wanted to live out her dream. It hadn’t been possible in her lifetime, and though it wasn’t exactly her lifelong obsession or anything like that, now that she thought about the possibilities of a new life, there was only one thing she could possibly wish for.

 _“To become a cute robot maid and live life to the fullest!!”_ She would’ve shouted to the void, to the world, to God himself if he was there, but again, she was just a soul.

If she was going to reborn, that’s what she wanted to be. She believed that with all of her heart and soul. Well actually, what she truly believed with all her heart and soul was that she wanted to be an idol and to stand on stage next to her beloved Rin, but she had even less hope of that happening.

And in a moment, her hope would be all that remained, as everything else bled out into the void. She felt what remained of her sensation, her thoughts, seeping away. Dark, then deeper dark, and then finality.

She was gone.

And then she wasn’t.

Her eyes opened and she found herself in an unfamiliar environment. An old-looking room, for her that is. As her eyes adjusted to the sudden change in environment, she realized the style of décor was like it was… from the Victorian era.

Everything looked old, but in an odd way. She looked to her left and saw a leather chair that had clearly been left to time. It had wrinkled, and all of the scars(?) and markings on it clearly showed its age.

And yet if she looked to her right, there was a bookshelf which looked to be in pristine condition. She could see their gold, gilded spines, shining as if only a little weathering had touched them.

Even the paintings on the walls showed a clear difference. The warm sun shone down around her, and yet the paintings seemed… okay? She’d heard sunlight damaged paintings, but she wasn’t exactly sure how.

Hell, she’d been an artist, but mostly digital, or pencil and paper. She’d never liked ‘proper art’ classes in high school. She’d been studying an IT degree… shortly before she died, because it made more sense from a practical point of view.

Well, back to the matter thing at hand, since all the paintings were fine, maybe it was just the sun wasn’t that warm. That had something to do with paintings deteriorating right? The sun was directly on her skin, but she couldn’t really feel it.

Actually, she didn’t really seem to feel much of anything she realized. She brought a hand up to her face and that’s when she noticed.

Shiny white skin, like porcelain. Visible joints in her fingers, like you would see on an anatomy model. She tapped her fingers together, and they made an audible _clink._

She slowly got up to her feet, a murky feeling filling her heart. She wasn’t sure which emotion it was, bubbling up inside her. She wanted to scream.

 _What if it was, just what if-_ _it happened?_ The thoughts raced through her mind.

it was then that she noticed a convenient mirror nearby. It was a grand, floor-length mirror which was currently being covered with some kind of sheet.

She could see the mirrored surface underneath the sheer cloth, but she couldn’t make out anything else. To see her reflection… to see if she really was who she thought she was, or _what_ she thought she was, she had to pull back the sheet.

She braced herself. Her body knew it, but her eyes didn’t. Her mind couldn’t let her believe it. That’s why she had to pull back the sheet. She had to see it with her own eyes.

What she saw was beyond all of her wildest dreams.

Standing before her was the very picture of beauty and elegance. Shining, waist-length, raven black hair. Not completely straightened but wavy instead, billowing out behind her. Milky white eyes, and an immaculate… mask. That’s what it was, a mask.

It was almost out of place. The colour of it was a similar white to her hands, which she noticed was a few shades lighter than the rest of the body as she pulled down her sleeve. It was sort of like gloves, the white porcelain surface gave way to a creamy, wood-like surface a few inches past the wrist. With her face, the seam extended from just behind her ears, and it was well-hidden from the front

Long black eyelashes, a shapely nose if she did say so herself, (and she did say so), and her lips had a subtle bit of rose coloration to it.

And her clothes.

She felt like she could gush about them forever if she wanted to.

They were like a stylized Victorian maid outfit. The white half-apron(skirt half in this instance) was replaced by what appeared to be a selection of unnaturally long black feathers. Each one about the length of her arm, arranged around her as a sort of dress. There was more cloth underneath, it was indeed like an apron over a uniform dress. There were regularly-sized black feathers around her collar, and also on her sleeves, more specifically the cuffs of her uniform.

A small bonnet was nestled in her hair, (the type that was worn like a tiara, she didn’t know what they were called). The main body of it was pure white, but several small feathers were stuck to its surface in such a way that created a pattern and broke up the silhouette.

And finally, a large onyx brooch pinned to her chest. It featured the polished black gem in the middle, with two downy feathers underneath, each about the size of her index finger.

She did a slight twirl in the mirror. The way the glossy feathers caught the sunlight as she did so, and the alignment of the feathers as she spun…

She was in love. With herself.

As she landed, she went automatically into a curtsy and a light smile.

She felt giddy with happiness, yet it didn’t show on her face. Only a soft smile, and yet she was falling deeper and deeper in love. The picture of elegance and grace, a true Magical, Mechanical Maid.

She never thought that after Rin, she would find another who was The One, and the person it happened to be was herself.

\--

She decided to call herself ‘Crow’. A new body meant a new name. She hadn’t happened to see a name tag anywhere, so she used her own name tag. Yeah, she was just going to leave it at that for now.

After getting used to the shock of being in another body, she took note of the odd sensation of ‘inhabiting’ the body.

Rather than inhabiting the body, it felt a little more like she was piloting it. She could still directly feel sensations, although it was through a layer of porcelain, so not quite the same as a human touch.

But the way she performed actions in the body was different. She could move her arms and legs as normal, but with the lack of sensation it didn’t feel as tactile as usual. The biggest difference though, and the reason she felt she was ‘piloting’ it instead of say, wearing it, was that she could give her body commands!!

She could instruct it in the ways she wanted it to move, and her actions were filtered into something more graceful than she, would have been capable of in her real(old?) life. But ‘Crow’, in her new body performed them all without any issues.

Speaking was sort of normal, but with a _big_ sort of. The words she wanted to speak were spoken when she wanted to speak them. It’s just instead of _her_ speaking them, it felt like she stepped into an entirely different persona when she spoke as… well, herself now was it not?

The persona of a refined and dignified maid. She felt it. When she stepped in to speak, she became as an elegant and dignified maid, which was… she would just say _a little_ far removed from how she was in real life. The words just rolled off her tongue without much conscious effort to choose them.

After examining her body thoroughly, and how it overall functioned, she would say it felt good. Perhaps a little too good. It was perfection, exactly how she wanted to be, her ideal maid.

Maids were infallible, after all! A good maid knew what kinds of emotions to display, and their remarks were always suited for the situation.

If ‘Crow’ wanted to giggle like a school-girl, she’d instead let out a mature, and dignified laugh. (Author’s notes: Many claims made in the following statement are disputed by official sources)Crow’s quick wit and scathing remarks also seemed amplified in her current state. In this state, she was sure she would have no trouble with that notorious youngster!!(Who was older than her) that she knew.

Always stealing her thunder, always leaving her scrabbling for answers. She would show him!! Except that she couldn’t, of course. She sighed.

That was one way to bring herself back to reality.

If there was one scary part about this… well, she seemed to take to her new circumstances a little _too_ easily. She felt like she would forget where she came from one of these days. Writing a journal would probably be enough, though, so it would probably be fine.

With that out of the way, it was time to find out who made her? And why?

She began to look around the room in earnest. Earlier it had just been a cursory inspection, now she moved with a purpose. She knew in this world there must be some kind of magic making her move. How else would it happen? Unless there was some super advanced technology hiding behind the bookshelf, that was so advanced she wouldn’t be able to distinguish it from magic.

And then what would be the difference?

She looked back to the place where she lay when she had woken up. There was a faint outline, like the dust hadn’t been able to enter in a circle around where she was. That certainly made sense with how pristine her body was.

And then she saw the book.

It seemed to have fallen on the ground, outside of the circle, but it was far from the bookshelves. By the position of it, it must have been placed on her lap. There was no other place for it to fall from.

It was leather-bound, and rather plain. She reached down to touch it, but suddenly, on the cover, something that looked very distinctly like a magic circle flared to life! And disappeared just as quickly.

“Oh my…” She said, touching a finger the top of her lips.

It was still a little disconcerting when she spoke in that maidly voice which certainly wasn’t her own, but she would get used to it in time.

She opened the book to its first page. She soon realized this was a diary. There was a sequence of numbers written on top. The format was instantly recognizable, although it wasn’t exactly the same as dating methods in her world.

Still, it was the familiar day/month/year it seemed, but the month was written out as a word. A word that she couldn’t read… wait, she _could._ If she peered closer, the letters transformed from an unrecognizable scrawl to English lettering.

 _13 Jundi, Year of Enlightenment 645…_ The words floated just above the page in plain English.

_Another year without my love. They said that time heals all wounds, but they have only made them deeper. I miss her with every fibre of my being… Every night without her I spend staring into the night sky praying for her to come back. The only thing that soothes the pain is my right h-_

Crow quickly slammed the book shut. Well, it was certainly a diary alright, but whoever had penned this clearly hadn’t intended to use it as an… informative piece of literature let’s just say. At least on the outset. Perhaps she would find the answers she was looking for on another page.

She flipped through the journal carefully, looking for key-words on the pages.

_38 Sepgint, Year of Enlightenment 657…_

_I’ve done it at last. A new body for my beloved. To create it I had to pore over my many tomes. I had to steal from the Great Archives. A man of my calibre, reduced to stealing! Oh, if my younger self could see me now. I would’ve told him to be a bit wilder in his youth, and he would’ve told me to go #$%^ myself! It would’ve made the whole damn thing a lot easier if I invented time travel, truth be told… Since I could give him the notes and just tell him it’s for later. I just hope the empire doesn’t find out about this…_

…There was an Empire? Looking around at the architecture… maybe it was Britain again.

As a proud American, she felt she had a responsibility to rebel against it, if it was. _Liberty or Death!!_ Or something like that. Had she gone back in time instead of sideways? If she did, then that meant… magic was in real life?! Yeah, it probably wasn’t Britain, maybe the author had just gotten lazy with the setting (author’s note: yes, but the aesthetic).

…Anyway, getting back to the journal, flipping to a more recent page told her an odd 5 years or so had passed between this entry and the last one she’d read.

 _42 Deudi,_ _Year of Enlightenment 662…_

_I created the doll 3 years ago now but failed to find my love’s soul. But now I set aside that project and take up a new one. Gardening! My daughters have come back to the family manor. I failed in bringing back my old love, but I’ve discovered a new one! Taking care of my adorable daughter and granddaughter._

The next few pages were sappy remembrances of days going by. It seems the old man had made his peace. How sweet. She decided to flip ahead closer to the end however, because she still didn’t have the answers she wanted to see.

_1 Janes, Year of Enlightenment 665…_

_She’s dead. My daughter is dead._

…That was all that was written. She felt a lump in her throat.

She flipped to the next page… only it was blank.

 _“That can’t be it…! There has to be more!”_ She said, in her real voice somehow, maybe in her own mind but she didn’t have that much time to think about it as she rapidly flipped through the remaining pages.

Blank, blank, blank, blank… And then, the end.

She stared at the journal in her hands, perplexed. This felt odd. Very odd. She turned it this way and that, trying to bring it up to the light to see if more words appeared. She even… (discretely) brought it up to her nose to see if she could smell lemon juice…

Surprisingly, she could smell at all. Unsurprisingly, it just smelled of old paper.

She had so many unanswered questions still, even more than when she had first began. But strangest of all… kind of, soft? She had no idea who this person was, but, well… she could feel his emotions through the page and she felt like a grandpa she’d never had before.

She felt kind of bad for skimming through it now… But she could feel his anguish, even though he hadn’t said much.

She really wanted to know more about what happened, she supposed she wouldn’t really find the answers in this journal anyhow.

She was about to close it for good, but suddenly words began to appear on the open pages in front of her.

It was a blazing, red script, like it was being burned onto the page as she watched. The words written were once again, in that unfamiliar language, but whatever it was that was translating for her seemed to have no trouble keeping up.

_O wandering soul, I called and you came, which is far more than a man like me deserves. That you read these words is evidence itself. These are my Will, the final testament of my life and all I have wrought. I will die soon. You will be all that remains of me and my accomplishments._

_I beseech you. Restore my house to its former glory. Turn my house into a place of warmth and love once more. I can never again have that honour. I have never once claimed that honour. I only had the opportunity but I had never realized it._

_This house and my family were my all, and now, out of those three, only one remains. Its fate is yours._

…

Under the passage, the fire continued to burn through its path, and traced the shape of a key. When she reached out and touched the key, it was like she knew the fire was suddenly hers to command. As she tried it, the key lifted off the page and darted past her outstretched hand, and into her chest.

A feeling of warmth emanated from the point of impact. She patted the area where it had entered her body, and she felt like she might be feeling a little warmth from it still.

She had a… hunch about what she could do.

She pointed a finger upwards, towards the sky, and then she focused. She untethered her consciousness from her corporeal form and dove down to try and reach that place. The place the key had entered.

It wasn’t that hard to find. Now, she had the hunch about how to do this and enter here intuitively, but from here on out she was on her own, she felt. But she also felt that was because the next step wouldn’t be a difficult one to find.

Maybe all she had to do was enter the light.

When she next opened her eyes, the blazing key was before her again.

\--

The key turned out to be, well… the key.

With it, she unlocked more of the journal, more words appearing in that same, fire-like script. She had a mind to comb through and find out what it was exactly it revealed, but she’d had a quick look and realized it picked up directly where the journal had left off.

There were more pressing matters at hand, however. The key had also revealed more writing on the final page. Without putting on any more airs, it told her how to open the manor.

And open it she did.

She was no expert in assessing houses, but it seemed like the house had been abandoned for some amount of years already. That mismatched state of decay which she’d observed in the room she woke up in could now be explained.

Especially since she could now detect and see the presence of Magic. She was starting to get tired of the key symbolism, so she wasn’t going to get into that again. In terms of her horizons now, instead of just physical doors. Just in case you needed to know!

She saw many active sigils throughout the house, conveniently colour coded for her… convenience she supposed? It was a pretty simple system, at first glance. As she approached, the sigils that were the same colour as her key dissipated on their own.

There was a little bit of a problem here however, as she realized this meant more things she’d have to clean in the future. They’d been protected from the elements while inside their sigils, just like she had been, but now they weren’t, presumably.

((author’s words: ”You should know this is a problem, because she is of lazy.”))

Hey, she used to live with three roommates, so maybe she’d gotten used to splitting the chores, alright?!

Maybe if it was for her own sake she would be more apprehensive, but if it was for the sake of being a maid… a true maid… she felt like she could do it. Maybe.

However there were also several different flavours of circles which remained intact. No problems understanding that there, as a lifetime GamerTM she understood she needed more differently coloured keys in order to open them up.

The journal she had hadn’t mentioned how to find the others. Yet. But maybe _she_ was the one who had them. While she had been… exploring her body, she’d discovered something extremely interesting. It hadn’t been something hidden underneath her clothes, (you perv).

She had hidden mechanisms!! While she was inspecting a dusty chair which seemed for all the world like a workable chair besides the dust, her hand popped open and a feather duster came out.

It surprised the hell out of her, to put it lightly. It also excited her!! What if she could shoot out a rocket punch?! She had to know!

She found that she could open up her arm on her own, and she could put things inside and take them out in the order she put them in. Where did they go when she put them away? Well, she wasn’t sure, but if she focused like how she went to take out the Key, she could rearrange the order in her mind.

It seemed very handy!! So far she’d found more feather dusters. Various lengths to reach various places!! She’d also found various other cleaning implements, and even a fire poker!!

If you were wondering why she was using so many exclamation marks, it was because she was very excited!!

She wasn’t just a magical maid, or just a mechanical maid, she was a Magical Mechanical Maid!

Magnificent Magical Mechanical Maid: Crow!! To be precise. A stunning catchphrase, if she did say so herself, but she felt that it was missing something… a little extra pizzazz… a little extra… presentation. She needed some sort of routine!! But how to do it…?

So much to do, but so little time. She had to keep up her maidly demeanour. But, well, she could at least skip down the halls a little, couldn’t she? (author’s note: “yes this is stupid but bear with it, please”)

\--

Elsewhere in the manor, something old was stirring. A beady eye flitted open in the darkness.

A common crow.

Many had taken up nesting in here, something which our Magnificent Maid had yet to encounter, but would no doubt be unsurprised to see after her initial shock. But perhaps as she wandered the halls, the sheer number of them would arouse suspicion.

Once she exited the halls sealed by the Fiery Sigil, there was a nest around every corner. The little birds only stared blankly at her and flew away warily as she passed. But in that place, where the beady eyed little crow had been sleeping, there was something else. If one were to be in the room right now, unlikely as that would be, they would notice something odd about the wall.

There were three yellow strips of light filtering through from shuttered windows. It was the only light in the room. The shutters were made of cast iron. Rigid, and strong.

But… if one were to look closely, they would notice the strips of light appeared to be moving.

Like and eye, blinking slowly. The shadows seemed to squeeze down the light until there was just a sliver left, and then they would stop, letting the light return to fill the meagre space it had been allotted before.

In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out. In, out.

The observant observer would notice the amount of repetitions and the consistency of the phenomena made it more akin to breathing rather than blinking. Such knowledge would surely be of alarm when they suddenly hear the heavy thuds of some being skipping down the hallway above the creature, and they see the light making a ‘jump’, akin to what would be a waking start by the Shadow Logic they had assumed was reality.

The thing opened its eye.

It blinked once, twice, then a multitude of times, and then shuffling and ruffling its feathers as it rolled over to stand on its own two feet. Its beady black eyes darted around the room, completely missing the other presence in the room in its manic rush to identify the source of the unseen annoyance.

(The dreaded, rapid, sound of thudding from just above you, that all apartment owners know.)

Finally, the thing took a deep, rattling breath and shouted.

“WHO THE HELL IS MAKING THAT RACKET?!?!?!?” It shouted.

The room shook in the terrible throes of its anger, but its voice, unlike its presence while it had been asleep, was almost comical. It was loud and scratchy and raspy, and the vocabulary alone could’ve had him mistaken as a parrot. The pitch was very distinct, of course.

It was more as if a crow had learned how to speak human words. Which, perhaps was exactly what it was.

The creature of darkness shook itself awake. It homed in on the source of the sounds which irked it so, it was coming right above their room but it seemed to slowly be making its way further into the mansion.

As a creature of darkness, it was no stranger to strange sounds. But this many abrasive thuds, without a care in the world, going in a straight line for no particular reason? It had to be a human.

“…Huh?” It said. “Somebody got in?!?!”

It began to run frantically around the room, knocking things over at random.

“What in the hell do I do?! I need to get out of here!” It cawed frantically. “I don’t want to get banished again!”

The creature, darting around the room finally fixed its eyes on his kin. A small, regular crow who was now hanging back, feathers puffy and raised, clearly not expecting the great and terrible panic which had possessed the Greater One.

“What the hell are you staring at?! Spit it out already!” The Great One warbled.

The smaller crow was clearly taken aback by the misplaced aggression. Nevertheless, it began to let out a series of rapid caws, which the Greater One appeared to be fluent in. It was quite a sight to see a beast with such a feral appearance nodding along, listening attentively to a creature perhaps a tenth its size.

“Huh? Oh… ok… What? Say that again? Huh? Ok…” He said. “So… a ward disappeared…?”

The Greater one looked towards the wall where it seemed a series of Sigils were on the wall. The first of them was missing, a faint outline remaining was the only trace of it that remained. “Huh? Then that means…”

The Great One cocked its head to the side for a moment as if processing the new information.

“THAT MEANS SHE’S AWAKE!! WHAT DO WE DO?!?!” The loudest cry so far, you could even imagine the Great One’s beady eyes bulging comically out of their sockets with the fear he expressed.

“WE’RE SCREWED! We’re screwed, we’re screwed, we’re screwed, we’re SCREWED!!!!!” The Greater One continued to wail.

His smaller minion seemed to display some measure of distress at the situation and frantically cawed to try to calm its master. Surprisingly it seemed to work, as the Greater One stopped his rampage and listened to the caws.

“Huh?! Scare her?!” He exclaimed.

The cawing continued for a few more moments.

“Huh, you’re right…” The Great One said. It’s face contorted and twisted, forming as good a smile as its corvine visage allowed.

“If she’s reeeeeally who she’s supposed to be, this might just work…” He said, cackling evilly. By this point, several crows had heard the commotion and come in through various holes in the walls to congregate before their Master.

“Alright, boys!” He cawed out. “It’s time to get to work!”

\--

In her journey throughout the Manor’s halls, she’d found out a few things, about herself and the manor. First, that she was _strong._ Physically speaking. She’d managed to pry a metal window shutter off of its rusted hinges earlier on accident.

She also felt like she could bench press a wardrobe or two if she felt like it. There wasn’t exactly enough space to try it though…

Besides that, there wasn’t really much to think about. Besides the sigil locked doors, there were also several doors blocked off in different ways. Some were sealed with some kind of impenetrable force. She was repelled as soon as she got close, even with her strength she couldn’t push through them.

There was one room locked with some kind of strange device. She couldn’t manage to pry it off, so she left it alone for the moment. There were also a few rooms locked with some kind of… sticky black tape, is how she would describe it.

They looked like ribbons, of some kind of material like velvet, except it was sticky like, glue almost, and extremely tough as nails. She couldn’t tear it, (again with her zonked out strength stat). She was starting to think it felt pretty pointless.

Mysteries upon mysteries, another of which was the Mansion’s most prevalent, and perhaps only other residents.

Crows! That weren’t herself of course.

There wasn’t an extremely high concentration of them in any one place, but they were there, everywhere! Every corner she looked might have the remnants of a nest; traces of feathers, refuse, and excrement; and a lot of the time she would see the crows themselves.

Who then seemed to regard her with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion.

She didn’t approach them yet. She waved and gave them a soft smile. She didn’t know they whether they understood or not, but she did it anyway and continued on.

That was because it was easy to default into being polite for her. In her mind, a battle was raging.

 _Why is the bird poop everywhere?!!_ _She had to clean the mansion under this kind of mess?!?!_

The concept of ‘loving from a distance’ sprang to mind. She liked crows. And she had her role as a Crow Maid, but… the amount of bird poop in here was staggering. She supposed it was from the years they must have taken residence in here for.

That did sort of mean they were her seniors, so she couldn’t just kick them out, right?!

It seems her thinking on her dilemma as she walked through the rooms was attracting more attention than she thought. She began to notice the crows following behind her in subtle ways. There would be one or two more somewhere behind her sometimes when she looked back.

The ones closest to her would pretend as if they were looking at something else. Since the crows had side-facing eyes it usually meant they were either faced directly at her or looking away from her entirely. Some of the ones farther away thought they were invisible behind objects and stared directly at her as if she wouldn’t notice.

It was very adorable. And then there was the one that was… less subtle about it.

“Oh dear…” She said.

A small crow, (perhaps a juvenile by the looks of things) had been tailing her for a few rooms. It must have been quite curious about her, because she knew juveniles rarely strayed far from their parents. Or was it the parents which stayed close to the child?

The two were certainly there, however they were fearful of approaching the tall stranger. Even if she did look similar to them, in some ways.

Their anxious watch turned into a frightened panic as the smaller crow wheeled overhead and smacked head-first into an exposed ceiling beam. She didn’t know what came over her in the next moment, but she rushed over to catch the falling bird before it could hit the ground.

For some reason she felt short of breath, and she was unsteady.

It was only a few seconds, but it felt like a lifetime. The crow’s eyes fluttered open. It blinked like it was disoriented, but otherwise it seemed safe and healthy. A flood of relief came through her. She wasn’t sure if her actions had really affected the outcome, but she was happy, nonetheless.

The bird regarded her with a look of confusion, or at least she interpreted it as such. She understood it, for sure.

It would be strange after all, to be cradled by someone so alien to you. So… different from you. When she was even different to herself.

What… was it that was coming over her?

She was snapped out of her thoughts by the calls of the two larger crows. They stood nearby, unsure whether to assault the strange creature to rescue their child, or if the strange creature had indeed been helping, and there was reason to trust the creature.

She looked at the bird in her arms. It didn’t seem to be afraid, but this wasn’t home.

“Go back to where you belong, little one,” She said softly.

She let the little bird fly off to join its kin.

The weird feeling washed over her in waves. She could only remember one thought going through her mind, in a voice that was almost her own, but wasn’t.

What a thing it was, to love, and be loved.

She felt… alienated. Lonely. What was the reason she was alive…? Or anyone for that matter?

That storming brew of thoughts came as quickly as it went. She put a hand to her chest and wondered. Would she remember them? Or would she forget them?

\--

There was one last place to check before she’d have the full run of the manor. She’d counted all the floors she had descended, had a short jaunt outside to take stock of the manor and found there was indeed one floor she had yet to explore.

The attic. It had been a little difficult to find the entrance. She hadn’t recalled seeing it on her tour throughout the manor before, but she had found it now through some sort of happenstance, she surmised.

Because the entrance was open. A wooden stairway extending down from the ceiling. She knew she hadn’t seen anything here when she passed by the first time.

She felt a sense of foreboding. Especially because of the black feathers conspicuously placed on each step. She was kind of having an outer-body experience trying to puzzle out why black feathers, considering the amount she had adorning her own body, the possibility that the crows had done it?

And that there was something else that could be described as having an intent in this manor.

…There were also a lot of crows nearby. If she had to guess, their number felt about equal to all the crows she had seen on her tour throughout the manor.

They seemed nervous. Fidgety, she would say. It was quite amusing. They each had their own little groups and they seemed afraid of getting closer to her. They were clearly waiting for something. She surmised that that ‘something’ was for her to ascend the steps and face whatever it was that wished to meet her.

“Well, I suppose I must oblige,” She said. She turned towards an invisible audience and let out a small curtsy, before ascending the stairs.

As a maid, she had a responsibility to listen to her residents’ requests, no matter who they were.

…There was a being, if she had to guess, arranging all this. As, if the Crows had a leader, or master, and they were practically begging for her to meet them.

So she decided to step forward into inky blackness.

After a few seconds she found herself under a spotlight, of sorts. A hole in the ceiling let light shine down from above, but the darkness felt… unnatural. The radiant warmth of the sun, smothered, or strangled perhaps, so as not to breach its desired space.

In the darkness around her, she could hear the soft _tac tac tac,_ of claws against wood all around her. For each set of beady black eyes she saw peering back at her in the darkness, she could hear a rustling of feathers, and feel a vague presence just out of the reach of the light.

A captive audience? There were even more crows than she had anticipated.

“We have been expecting you.” A voice said. It was… stranger than before. (Author’s note: It would be Crow’s first time hearing it, but if you were, let’s say, a fly on the wall just a few hundred moments ago, when the creature had first awoken, you would have the requisite experience to recognize one of the many voices the creature speaks through. A well-practiced persona, a demon-sona if you will. Created by a creature of pure darkness for the purpose of intimidation.)

It was like many people talking, with one dominant voice. Unnervingly human-like, but not quite correct. Just the ticks and mannerisms of its speech… it changed pitch at the drop of a hat, its words stopped and started with no rhyme or reason.

But there was always a deep, throaty undertone to it. Well, except when there wasn’t she supposed.

“Do you know who you are?” It said. “Do you know? Where you are?”

She didn’t really know what she was dealing with here. Was it really a good idea to admit the truth in front of a stranger? Was it even friend or foe?

“…You don’t even know? Whose presence you stand in, now?!” With that, the Creature stepped forward.

The surrounding crows began to shout and cry, and they began to create a cacophony of noise. They flapped their wings, let out loud shrieks, as the Greater One emerged from the shadows and made his dark presence known. It was like it emerged from a thick smoke, darkness rolled off its black wings and its polished claws.

Eyes blazing with an other-worldly light, and a crackling, purple energy, which seemed to surge over the Creature’s body in waves.

“I am the black wings of night. I am the watcher in the dark.” He said. “I am the encroaching shadow. I… am… Raum…”

“…Very well,” Crow said, acknowledging the creature’s presence.

This was the master the crows answered to. She could feel the power emanating from him.

“What is it that you desire from me, Raum?” She said carefully.

She would’ve slipped a few choice words such as; _‘Jesus, FUCK, what is that?!’_ , but luckily her maidly demeanour prevented any panic from displaying in her voice. Everything about him, or it, creeped her out! Did this look like a guy she could just talk it out with?!

“We desire that you leave us in peace, that is all,” Raum said, beginning to circle around the magical mechanical maid. “We have nested here for many, many years now, and we desire to keep our nest, for a few more years still. Isn’t that agreeable to you?”

“…I do find it to be agreeable,” She began. “However. Your manner of speaking to me here… shouldn’t I consider it a threat?”

“Why else begin negotiations here, other than to intimidate me? This is a position of power for you, I have no doubt. You say you know who I am, but… is that the truth?”

With that, she revealed the journal which she had kept with her, from inside a pocket on her uniform. (Yessss, the pockets were that big, and it was SO, SO good.)

“I see, so you have it.” The creature said, seeming to stop and assess its options for a moment. “Then that means, that you must die.”

And with a shrill and high shriek, the dark assault began. The meagre amount of light she had received was throttled out, seemingly for good.

Even though the purple lightning sounded like it would’ve been a dead giveaway, his razor sharp claws were completely invisible in the darkness. They could cleave right through wood (author’s note: she assumed. No basis for this assumption), and they were fast!

So how was she dealing with it so far? Really well actually. It was sort of hard to explain.

As soon as the fight began, something else inside her took over, but rather than being pushed to the back seat, it was more like suddenly she’d had her steering wheel ripped away and replaced with a submarine tactical control panel, she would say.

She was sorry to say, it didn’t look like anything because there wasn’t anything to see. It was just… uncannily close to how it felt. Instead of processing data from her sensors into information herself, she was receiving the information and making judgements on how to proceed. She would then give the order, and her body would execute the instruction.

She could _hear_ him as he approached even in the dark, crows were hardly silent fliers, but this was on another level. The degree to which she could predict his movements was staggering. It was as if she wasn’t in the dark at all.

Her mind, or whatever it was that had taken over processed the sounds of everything in the room all at once and tabled their distances away from each other to create a sort of mind map for the area. It also used her memory of the brief time she’d had to see the layout of the attic.

But more than that, she’d never felt more _in control._ Again, it was hard to explain, but if she focused she could feel as if maybe it was actually some half of her doing the calculations. As she sat in the captain’s chair, so to speak, she knew that she was somehow the one relaying her information. She just had to act.

 _The next attack is coming from… behind!_ She artfully dodged to the side, her skirt fluttering just out of reach of its claws.

 _Then… left…!_ She took a light step and felt the breeze touch her skin briefly as it passed by.

 _And… straight ahead this time?_ She made a graceful backflip and felt the _whoosh!_ Of the demon passing her below.

The shadows parted for a sec, letting the light illuminate the Crow’s maid form again.

“Ok, seriously?! How the HELL are you doing that?!?!” The Raum said, reverting suddenly to his normal voice.

“Oh my, who is that a rather adorable voice I hear in the dark?” Crow called out.

Raum remained in the shadows, as she’d expected. She hadn’t known it had been putting on a fake voice, but all she could think was that behaviour certainly suited a crow.

“Gah! This is bullshit!” The crow demon cried out. “I’ll just get what I want the normal way then! By killing you!”

It seemed that the aggravated inhabitant of this fine establishment had made a decision. Truth be told, all she was thinking about was how adorable his voice was. It was like a big crow had learned to talk! How lovely!! (author’s note: yeah we’re doing this again. Sorry.)

Still, he did present a clear threat. She couldn’t spend all day dodging him. She didn’t know what he was capable of.

Clearly it had been holding back, but so had she. He had the potential to damage the manor she had been entrusted. On her pride as a maid, she couldn’t let him do that without trying to stop him. Quickly, in her mind, she formed a plan, and decided now was the time to execute it.

“…You asked me earlier, do I know who I am? At the time, I gave you no answer because I was uncertain of your intentions.” She began. “Now I know. And I am free to tell you who I am.”

She struck what she thought was a cool pose. Or rather she told herself to and her body said ‘no’ and stayed stock still, remaining where it was.

“I am made from the sum of many minds. My body was constructed by the owner of this place, to restore and protect it. I have been imbued with grace. Filled with light. Taught of love.”

That last part made her physically (in her mind, so mentally) cringe because of how similar in cadence it was to a Live Laugh Love variant. My god, it was basically just a live laugh love variant.

…Mmmmm yes, she definitely had a new memory to look back on for years to come now. Oh boy, she couldn’t wait to not get to sleep tonight.

“And you have chosen to be my enemy. I expect you know what happens now.”

“HAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH!! WHAT?!!” The Crow demon laughed and laughed, endlessly. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU EVEN TALLKING ABOUT?! HAHAHHAHAHAH-!“

There were no more words, because she was already upon him. Armed with a boiling, somewhat misguided fury and embarrassment, and a glowing sphere of pure power in her other hand.

You see, while she had been exploring the depths of her consciousness, she’d found her way to another piece of magic.

It had led to another, and to another, and to another, but she had stopped at the first after seeing what it could do. And that same result that she had created then, she recreated now.

“Light!” She called.

It was like a supernova had suddenly exploded in the palm of her hand.

Not that she’d ever seen one or thought about what it would be like. It’s gotta be bright right since stars are bright and a supernova is like BAAAAAANG, WHOOSH, BRRRRRRR or whatever supernovas are like. Oh right, only the light from this supernova. If she made an actual supernova the house would be gone, and that would be bad for her.

Anyway, the world of darkness became a world of pure white.

“GAHHHHHH!” The crow demon shouted, clutching its eyes.

The demon successfully blinded; it was now time for the final step of the plan. With her enhanced strength, she would rip out a floorboard and smash the demon over the head with it.

She only wanted to knock it out, you see. Even if it was trying to kill her, she was a little hesitant to kill any intelligent creature.

From the feel of the boards at her feet as she had done her little dance earlier on, they felt sufficiently sturdy for such an endeavour. It would be a little unrefined, but she could deal with that as the price to pay. Now all she had to do was take the boards.

“Ah…” Crow said.

She suddenly realized a real hamper on her plan was the inability for her to see.

Still boards made no sounds, so she couldn’t track it. Also, there was a specific piece of knowledge she was lacking; of how to pry a floorboard from a floor with her bare hands. Also the time it took for the crow demon to be free of its temporary(?) blindness.

“…What the hell are you doing?” The crow demon asked, in a tone that belied a sort of fatherly disappointment.

The Crow demon would find the young made unsurreptitiously shining a light on the ground to try and find a crack or a seam to lift out a board with, unsuccessfully of course.

“You know… I had to gouge my eyes out and regenerate them for that right?” He said. “It hurt. It doesn’t mean much to me, but it hurt. I thought I had to hurry.”

“Ah, my apologies then,” Crow said, getting up onto her feet and dusting herself off.

The two stared at each other for a few moments unsure of what to do. Then they both decided to pretend that little incident had never happened and then they resumed fighting.

Crow knew to end the battle she needed a way to land a decisive strike. The board idea was a bust, so the only thing she could rely on was her portable arsenal of implements. The heaviest and sturdiest was likely her fire poker.

She was worried because it seemed more likely to maim the creature rather than disable it. This time it wasn’t just her sense of elegance, or duty, or whatever it was she thought was her reason for doing stuff in this body.

She didn’t want a death on her conscience.

That was final.

“If you don’t start taking this seriously, I might just really kill you!” The crow demon shouted.

She was adding parries to her repertoire, just as the crow demon had added diverting wing flaps, rending ranged strikes with its claws, and purple lightning breath attacks to its repertoire. The strikes seemed to cut into space itself! The only way she could defend against them besides dodging was striking his hand with the point as it swung towards her, to redirect the strike.

The demon didn’t seem a stranger at all to combat, but perhaps he hadn’t fought in a long time which explained his earlier ineptitude. Earlier he was full of holes and easy to deal with, but she was hard pressed to find a real opening now. As the fight went on he, was only getting faster and faster.

The surrounding murder was being whipped up into a frenzy by the battle. And then it finally happened.

The fire poker snapped.

It was just a moment’s hesitation, a moment’s surprise.

“I’ve got you!” The demon cried out.

The next thing she knew, the razor sharp claws were mere inches away from her face. And then she was gone.

But she wasn’t dead gone.

She didn’t know how it happened, but the demon’s claws only met a cloud of black feathers which marked the place she had once stood.

“Ah… Huh…?!“ The demon said whirling around to try and get a bead on where the maid went.

But try as he might, for some reason he couldn’t find her. The murder’s sounds of rippling confusion didn’t help matters. She was gone, and the cacophony wasn’t helping any.

He felt a light tap on his shoulder and he whirled around to find nothing but another scattering of pure black feathers. Another tap, and the feathers again. All the while, a building sense of dread as all he heard was the rapid footsteps of a super-human being, playing games with a terrifying demon of darkness.

He was being whirled into a fine whipped cream, and there was a dawning realization that crossed the Crow Demon’s mind that brought forth memories which he had struggled to forget. The touch of cold steel. A black storm. Death sentence. Eternal servitude.

“SHE’S AWAKE!“ He shouted.

A heavy weight landed on his back, and a black blade as pure as night was pierced straight through him. He let out a strangled cry, but the maid inf black made no remark or reply. She only twisted the blade deeper and deeper.

“NoOooo… You can’t…! You can’t take me back, again!” The demon wailed.

The maid in black leaned in close. The crow demon could see her hollow eyes filled with an emotion he couldn’t describe. An all too familiar terror which he thought he had long forgotten.

“Be silent.”

That merciless reply was the end of the struggle. The blade found its mark, and the Crow Demon collapsed. At the same time, the spell passed, whatever it was that had been controlling the maid, and she crumpled to the floor in a heap.

\--

Crow came to a moment later, to a gory tableau of death and destruction… sort of. It was just a big mess of feathers everywhere and a lot of squawking crows. The unnatural darkness which permeated the attic was now gone. Hooray!

But what had she done? Her head was spinning, and she couldn’t remember.

A long, weary, pained, tired groan, began to emanate from a mass of black in the centre of the room.

She waited for it to stop before speaking to him. And then she waited.

Until finally the groaning stopped.

“…Are you alright?” She finally asked.

The Crow demon fixed a beady eye on the Crow maid, somehow conveying all the emotion she needed to know.

“…Yeah, I think I’ll be ok,” Raum replied.

A few moments later, they were sitting up, across from each other.

“Well, I guess you want to know why we did all this…” He began, shyly.

She did want to hear her side of the story from the beginning. His initial attitude made it feel as if he wasn’t intent on negotiating, so she hadn’t pursued that avenue. Well alright, she could’ve also just been bad at talking…

“Well, we just wanted to chase you off, you know? I mean, you inherited the house now, right? We know the Old Man, and what he wanted to leave you. I mean, we saw him write the book and put it on your body before he left and all that…”

He knew the original owner of the house? Crow didn’t know whether that meant he had died recently, considering Raum was still here. But she could confirm that later, and Raum hadn’t finished talking yet so she let it continue.

“That blade of yours, it has the ability to bind demons to the wielder’s will, whoever it is wielding the sword.” He continued.

“Oh right, if it ain’t obvious already, I’m a Demon. These guys are regular crows who follow me around because they think I’m their boss.” He motioned to the crows behind him, always behind him, (she smiled to herself), who looked genuinely concerned for his wellbeing.

Yet another thing to add to her assessment of the adorableness for who it was sitting in front of her.

“The Old Man yanked me out of Hell a while back and he stabbed me with that. Uhhhh, a lotta stuff happened so I’m gonna skip that part. Oh actually, I guess you don’t remember, but he did bring you with him. You weren’t talking a whole lot, or really uhhhh… conscious I think. He was controlling you to fight me, and it uhhh… went really well for her, let’s just leave it at that.”

She raised an eyebrow at this. She had been deployed by the… Old Man (wow, she didn’t even know his name yet.) to fetch Raum out of hell. What else had he done with this body of hers, she wondered?

Then she remembered what was on that first page in the journal and she stopped wondering.

“He worked me to the bone, I tell you, until the day came. And I’m sure you know what I’m talking about if you’ve read that journal,” He said.

Suddenly Raum shifted the tone of his voice a little. He seemed a little more serious now. A little melancholic. Like he was remembering good days gone by.

“That day, he left the sword with you and then he left.” Raum said. “A couple days later, the contract lifted, and I never saw him again.”

Raum seemed to let his head down. Was he sad? Crow reached out to comfort him but before she could, she started hearing a sound, like a soft barking, or wheezing… which slowly revealed itself to be… a laugh.

“Man… If he saw what I did to his house, he would kill me for sure…” He said with a snicker.

Crow reflexively delivered a sharp slap onto the back of the crow demon’s head.

“Ow! What was that for?!” He shouted.

“Well, I suppose it was for nothing, really,” She said, getting up onto her feet.

The sun was still high, however she felt as if it was almost time to close this little chapter of the day.

She dusted off her apron, adjusted her bonnet and brooch, and took a few light steps to calibrate her sense of balance and movement again. She breathed in, calculated and measured the precise amount of air output required, and let out a precisely medium sigh.

“Now that I’m here, it’s my duty to clean all the mess that’s built up until now. With the state of the house as it is now, what’s a little more mess to me?” She said.

There were many things she still had to discover, and many things to do. But the only thing to do now was to get started.

“Ha… well that sounds great and all but I think it’s about time I went!” Raum called out. Somehow he was already at the attic window, ready to escape.

“Since you still don’t know how to use that sword properly yet, I’ll be able to get off scot free-! Hahah-.. GACK!”

Crow was already behind him, and she grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.

“No. You will help me. Perhaps you wouldn’t be suited for cleaning, but you did, after all attack your new master before she knew of her role. Doesn’t that warrant a little punishment?” She said with an evil smile.

Her grip was tight, and she overwhelmed him with pure strength as she drew him closer to her.

“W-W-What are you planning to do to me?!” Raum stammered out, squirming in place.

Many, many things. But there was one thing that had been weighing on her mind for several hours now, that she had no doubts Raum would be able to help her perfecy.

“Oh, nothing too strenuous for someone with your physique I expect,” Crow replied politely. “But I do plan on taking my time.”

Later that day, some inhabitants of the dense forest surrounding the once forgotten manor, claimed that they heard screams emanating from inside. Rumours of the abandoned Demon House began to spread amongst the townsfolk.

But our intrepid Maid wouldn’t know about any of this just yet. In our next episode, an unexpected guest will appear, with ties to the manor and the story of its creator.

_Next time, on Magnificent Magical Mechanical Maid: Crow!!_

**Author's Note:**

> Explain time:  
> 1\. Who is Rin?  
> A character from the Japanese Anime: Love Live! The original series I believe. Crow reveres her to the degree that my initial drafts in which I thought I had intentionally played up this facet of her personality were apparently "just about right".
> 
> Also I gave up on formatting specifically for Ao3, (typed up on a word document originally) so yeah, what you see is what you're gonna get. It's damn late and I wanted to be in time for Christmas.
> 
> That's about it. Might be more to explain next time, might be not. We'll see.


End file.
